By Phil Trubey
April 2, 2020
The RSF Association’s first ever virtual board meeting held today April 2nd was a great success. Technology worked flawlessly, and in some ways the meeting worked as good if not better than a regular meeting, although I wasn’t able to annoyingly shout out questions during the meeting. I’m sure the board didn’t see that as a minus.
Board Election And Annual General Meeting Postponement
As predicted, the board unanimously voted to postpone both the Annual General meeting, where board candidates get to talk and answer questions from members, and the board election for 7 weeks. The annual general meeting, which was scheduled for May 14th will now be held July 2nd. Ballots will now be due August 5th, and new board members will start their term September 1st, a two month delay.
Given the success of the virtual board meeting, I personally didn’t think we needed to postpone the election. Virtual town halls would work well. Having said that, only a few members actually attended this particular board meeting, less than would have attended a normal meeting. Given that a lot of people are supposedly at home with nothing to do, I was surprised at the lack of turnout. So maybe attending a virtual town hall is too high a bar to clear for our community after all.
Race Back To Performing In-Home Installs
Given the presence of COVID-19 positive residents in our community, Race Communications needed to acquire Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as suits and masks before entering homes. After about a two week delay, they are now performing in home installs again. Note that they never stopped doing outside construction work, such as digging conduits and running fiber to the outside of houses. They managed to do 60 installs in March, down from 80 in February, but that isn’t bad considering the coronavirus situation.
I heard a rumor that Race was starting to run out of outside construction work to do since not enough people had signed their contracts. I would urge everyone to put a priority on getting their Internet connection figured out in these uncertain times. Now more than ever, a stable high speed connection is essential. As usual, if you have questions that aren’t being answered elsewhere, I’m here to help.
Association Response to COVID-19
The RSF Patrol has continued to work full time helping our members and ensuring properties are safe.
While we didn’t get a financial report on how this situation is affecting Association finances, our CFO was able to put into place a low interest $2M extra revolving line of credit that would only be used if needed. The Association’s accounting department is still working diligently (mostly remotely), and asks that people send in their monthly dues promptly.
Golf Club take out has been very popular, preparing about 140 meals a day. Their Brandt beef freezer special was sold out very quickly and they continue to sell cases of wine. All in all, I’m impressed with the entrepreneurial mindset of the restaurant.
Extra Trails Scrutiny
The Association has found that more people from outside the community are using our trails. To mitigate this, they put up extra notices informing people that trails are meant for members only. They have now needed to go further and are having Patrol and code enforcement personnel stationed at certain trail entrances asking for people’s member IDs and addresses to ensure that trails aren’t being used by non-members.
Art Jury and Building Department
The Association’s building department is still reviewing new submittals, but there is a limit to how far they can go without the Art Jury being in session. The Art Jury meeting that was supposed to take place this past Tuesday was cancelled. The Association is now looking at a possible virtual meeting for the next scheduled Art Jury meeting that would normally take place April 21st.
The building department will be putting more forms and submittal information online.
Zoom Final Thoughts
I encourage people to attend the next Board meeting (May 14th). If nothing else, it is an interesting technological experiment. Some tips for those who would attend:
- Download the zoom app now and get familiar with it.
- While you don’t need a microphone or web cam (you can be in view only mode), having that is a nice plus. People are having virtual happy hours together using zoom, so having a web cam is nice.
- You can use your iPad, tablet, and even phone to access the meeting. These have built in video cameras, microphones and speakers.
- When registering your zoom account, use your real name. The Association in particular wants to know who is attending the meetings.
- Association board meetings rarely start on time, so just chill if you have a blank screen after you’ve entered the meeting.
- Zoom has a background filter option that can overlay a privacy screen behind you so that people won’t see your messy office. It’s in the settings.
- Webcams are hard to find now since everyone is buying them. But you can find them (I just bought one from newegg, shipping from Hong Kong!).
- Web cams come with a built in microphone and speaker. I personally like to use a headset since I hear better that way.
- If you want to test your zoom setup, let me know and I’ll send you a link for a quick video conference with me to make sure everything works.